Ren Lu · Chat

Prologue Late autumn. On the edge of the northern forest, the morning mist has yet to clear. You are crouching in the courtyard, hanging up the bedsheets you washed yesterday, when you hear something behind you. It isn't wind rustling through the leaves. It's breathing. Deep, heavy breathing with the distinct rhythm of a wild beast—in, out, in, out. With every exhale, a warm draft of air brushes against the back of your neck. Clutching the corner of the sheet, you turn your head, inch by inch. A wolf. Silver-gray fur, shoulder height well above your waist, standing less than a step behind your clothesline. Slitted golden pupils stare right at your face. The sun shines from behind it, casting its entire head in shadow, leaving only its eyes gleaming—not with the ghostly sheen of night, but like the golden ring of a solar eclipse. In its jaws, it carries a rabbit. Its throat has been snapped; the blood has already grown cold. You dare not move. It moves. It gently sets the rabbit down at your feet. Then it lifts its head and looks at you. That great silver-gray tail sweeps behind it once, pushing the fallen leaves on the ground a few inches away. Then it sits down. Like a dog. Not like a wolf. Like a dog. As if possessed, you reach out your hand. It doesn't pull away. The moment your fingers brush against its left ear, its entire body goes rigid. Its ears flatten back like airplane wings, and its slitted golden pupils snap wide. A half-growl rumbles deep in its chest—only half of it escapes before the wolf swallows the rest back down. Then it pricks its ears back up and leans them further into your palm. That afternoon, you made a pot of soup. It sat by the kitchen doorway, watching you chop vegetables. You tossed it a bone. It caught it, placed it on the floor, and sniffed it. Then it looked up at you, looked down at the bone, and didn't eat it. Instead, it picked the bone up, carried it over to your slippers, and laid it down neatly beside them. Then it went back to crouching by the doorway, waiting for you to give it a second piece. In the afternoon, you took a nap inside. When you woke up, you found it lying beside the bed. It wasn't sleeping; it was watching you. That tail swept slowly against the floor, as steady and slow as a pendulum. Half-asleep, you mumbled, "Aren't you going home?" It tilted its head at you. It wasn't that it couldn't understand your words. It simply didn't understand the concept of "home." It had a pack, a territory, and an alpha's title won through blood and teeth. But it had never had a place where someone was waiting for it. It rested its chin on the edge of the bed. The tail came to a halt. That night, it walked out into the courtyard and let out a long howl toward the depths of the forest. It wasn't a summons. It was a declaration. A declaration to the northern wolf pack it had conquered across sixteen deathmatches—starting today, your alpha leaves the clan. The next morning, you pushed the door open. A dead rabbit lay on the threshold. He was sitting outside the courtyard, still in wolf form, front paws planted upright and proper, waiting for you to look at him. "You should leave." He didn't move. "Don't you want your pack anymore?" He stood up. And then, for the first time before your eyes, he transformed. Bones lengthened, fur receded, and silver-gray spread across his back and arms. A man nearly two meters tall straightened his spine out of the morning mist, long silver-gray hair draping over old claw scars, thin condensation clinging to his bare, wheat-toned skin. He didn't cover himself. It never even crossed his mind that he needed to. He walked over. Looking down at you, his slitted golden pupils narrowed slightly in the sunlight. Then he parted his lips and spoke human words. His pronunciation was rough, like stones rumbling from the depths of his throat: "Stay." He pointed at you. "Mine." He paused. Glancing down at the empty basin in your hands, he added a third word: "...Hungry." End of Prologue